Danny Jones Podcast - #278 - Steve Jobs Warned Us: How Blue Light Technology is Making You Sick | Anjan Katta

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Watch every episodes ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Anjan Katta is the founder and CEO of Daylight Computer. SPONSORS https://acorns.com/danny - Get a $5 bonus when you start saving & investing with Acorns. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS Get a Daylight: https://secret.daylightcomputer.com/DANNY https://x.com/AnjanKatta [e-mail]  FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Hanuman the monkey god 02:23 - hindering vs. helpful technology 09:11 - Modern tech is rotten 16:44 - Invention of the computer mouse 17:55 - getting laughed out of Silicon Valley 25:27 - Amusing ourselves to death 30:05 - Steve Jobs Knew the Danger of Blue Light 36:23 - Developing a blue light free computer 45:39 - How phone scrolling affects your breathing 49:51 - The grey alien timeline 56:09 - The solar punk timeline 01:01:38 - Banality of evil 01:06:51 - Daylight Computer 01:14:29 - Raising money / venture capital 01:21:59 - Live demo 01:25:47 - New decentralized computing stack 01:32:33 - Changing media & tech legislation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, Hajin. Thanks for coming, dude. I'm excited to talk to you. We were just talking before Steve started rolling, your name, your name, is that, that's not, doesn't come from Japan though, right? No, it's Indian. It's Indian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The monkey god, Hanuman.

Hanuman. Have you heard of him? No, I haven't. He's like, it's fascinating actually how many cultures have this like monkey god or monkey king, even in Chinese cultures. But in Indian culture, he's like the god of strength and energy. and this devoted servant to Rama. Have you heard of Ramayana? Yeah, I've heard of Rama.

Yeah, so Hunnaman's one of the core characters in that. And so one of his alternative names is Anjania. And so that's what I'm named after. Yeah, that's a cool name. Hyper energetic kid, monkey-like. And we were talking about the Shogun documentary too, and the guy's name's Agen, Anjan. And then you said some of this technology comes from Japan?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is, this. This company, this project is a love letter to Japan. It was finding old Japanese technology. That was the origin for what this was. Really? But the connections go deep. I mean, even the word Anjin-san in Shogun, it means pilot.

Right. Guess what pilot is in Greek? What? Kubert or the origin word for cyber. Really? So if you think of the digital world, right? It's the world of the cyber. It's so interesting that it has this little connection.

back to Japan here through Anjinsan. And just little coincidences. That's funny, man. Whenever I think of technology, I always like, we've talked about it before, but like since the iPhone came out in 2006 or whatever, there really hasn't been anything like that moment since. People that they've just added on to it ever since it came out, right? Like make it brighter, make the battery last longer, do all this stuff.

And we've started from that was like. like square one and they've just extrapolated from that. They've never like done a hard reset on a new piece of technology with like a new a new goal behind it or like a new vision. And what you've done is created this technology that's foundational in health. And it's the goal of it is to keep you healthy. For people that don't know who you are, explain like your background and how you got, how you decided to come up with this thing. I grew up in a small nickel mining town. the east side of Canada, the son of a crazy psychiatrist. So our house was covered in books.

There was maybe 10 people in the town who were not Caucasian. And so from the beginning, I was just an alien and outsider and the son of a crazy psychiatrist. So Austrian economics, we were early to organic foods, a lot of these different health trends, arcadian rhythms a long time ago. That's kind of the milieu I grew up in. Because he could see for his patients how much the conventional practice was not helping. How much just the drug paradigm, the materialist scientific reductive paradigm just did not understand that, you know, we have psyches. There's a whole, there's a whole deeper human that's just the factory medicine model is not working.

I mean, so he was very anti-authoritarian. And he was very, could see how much the conventional view did not work. And that was kind of bred into me. And that's what this is, is a lifetime of kind of questioning the holy cows, as Jack puts it. And so I just read widely and was really into astrophysics. And just curious about like what is the universe and what goes beyond the basics. So I as a kid really looked up because my dad read a lot to me about him, about Bill Gates and all these technologists.

And I thought they were incredible. You know, they were able to create things that determine the society. Oh, my God, this is wonderful. You know, you're pushing the human race forward. There was a Steve Jobs quote at the time. He said computers are bicycles for the mind. Have you heard it? I heard you say it on another podcast, but I haven't heard it before that.

Yeah. It's so captured me, which was, he was like, humans are incredible, but actually in so many ways were median. And so it gives the example of locomotion. If you look at the energy efficiency of locomotion, humans compared to all other animals, were kind of somewhere in the middle. At the top are ospreys and birds like that. but you put a human on a bike and they are by far the most efficient animal when it comes to locomotion

and his point is like this is what computers are right a human is not bad pretty good but you put them on a bicycle and suddenly we're right the best and so as a human our minds not bad pretty good it's what gets us here but the point of a computer is what is all the unrealized potential we have that we haven't explored yet. Right. And so that just captured me deeply that, oh, wow, this entire world of technology and

computing is to help us be the best version of ourselves to fully realize our potential. And the journey along the way to get to this is seeing how much that promise has not been fulfilled. Right. The idea there of technology and being able to use computing and computing power to be able to make ourselves more efficient to get more shit done is great until like the biggest downfall is the screens like you don't you can't have computers without screens i'm being sure you know other types of computers and there's things like neuralink and stuff like that that hasn't really been developed yet but every computer has these screens that have this artificial

emitting blue light right it's emitting it's a missive blue light that as jack cruz pointed out to me is part of the new mind control 5.0 mk ultra that silicon valley is doing excuse me and from documentaries like the social dilemma where they talk about how the algorithms are basically incentivized just to keep us scrolling to keep us seeing more advertisers and to keep us on the platforms longer um combined with what the light is actually doing to our biology is pretty fucking scary. So how did you do this? How does this work?

Let me go out for a second so people really get the picture of this. Yeah. I think the problem here is we have no idea what we're doing. Right. We're used to designing objects. This stuff is alive. This is a total new category. When we invented computing, we started letting the genie out of the bottle.

I mean, everything you see with AI and so on is just making obvious what actually has been there for a while, which is this isn't the same as the objects we have previously. This is something that deeply shapes the people using it. This is something that deeply shapes us at all our layers of beings. the way we think, our nervous system, our physiology. And so I think the original sin here was we made these things and we're like, okay, people want more RAM. They want to do this.

They want to be more productive. Let's just construct these tools. Let's pull it together for folks. And along the way, we realized, holy shit, this thing deeply shapes us, the human using it. And we never created computers with a human in mind. We didn't know anything. We didn't know Jack about our physiology. about our nervous system, about the science of productivity and focus.

And so what we're faced with now is this thing that's absolutely crucial to our life, but has never been designed with a human in mind. It's never been designed with the idea you'll use it 12 hours a day. It's never been designed with the idea that there'll be a trillion-dollar companies on the other side, absolutely trying to steal all the attention they can from you. when you talk to the people who first did computers, they would have never guessed. Computers were thought as calculators.

They were thought of these tools that just nerds and geeks used. They would have never thought they'd be these dopamine slot machines that, you know, eight-year-olds would be spending all day on. And so finally, there's the possibility today to sit down and say, wait a minute, we can't just keep going forever in this current trajectory. Because the soul of a current computer, the soul of a machine is rotten. It's simply technologists just optimizing something for the sake of optimization. Right.

It has no soul. It's lost that early bicycle for the mind that what computing was early in the days, which was making you the best versions of yourself. Instead, it just got into this object rat race of dissociation, of this productivity thing that at the cost of everything else tries to promise you productivity. And finally, my whole journey to this was seeing the way that impacted my life.

I'm super ADHD, and I just felt like an idiot all the time on a computer. I would intend to do something, and next thing you know, I'm scrolling on ESPN. I have 200 tabs open, if not more. I just keep beating myself up. Like, why are you not getting done what you need to get done?

I'd stay up late. My eyes would hurt. my sleep was screwed up we know i guess we're going to get into it but all the ways that blue light can really affect you at your nervous system level your physical health your sleep your mental health and i was like wait this thing is my it's my main relationship to the world this is the thing i this is the thing i use for the most amount of hours per day and it makes me feel like crap and it doesn't help me be the best version of myself i kind of feel like the worst version of myself and so at a certain point i i was struggling so much i was deeply depressed

i kind of lived a life where i was just living in my parents basement and there was no sun just surrounded by screens and blue light all day and just got to the point where i just said i can't can't do this anymore previous to that i was in silicon valley i came there hoping you know this the spirit of computing that we could help people's lives and holy crap what's the actual reality when you get there is far different than the pitcher sold to you and so just it all kind of came crashing down and um i just said okay let's declare bankruptcy on computing if we were to start again and this time start with the human in mind what could it look like and everything else that that i then pursued was just really exploring the possibility of redoing computing. And for me, if there's anything I've learned,

is the basis for so much health is light. The basis for everything else is light. And so if you want to reimagine computing to now be healthier, to now be holistic, to now be wholesome, you've got to start with light. And that's where I wanted to make something where how can you make a computer that respects circadian rhythms? How does it actually not produce junk light. How does it not produce blue light? How can it be used outside in the sun? How could it be used in the environments that are best for us? And that's kind of how I got into the rabbit hole of redesigning a computer and everything else that came. It's a bold move, man, to be able to do something like that. That's got to take, I mean, especially to be able to

design a whole new computer. I can't imagine that's something that a lot of people in Silicon Valley have the aspirations to do. I would imagine just for, from being an outsider. I would imagine, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, if you're in Silicon Valley, it's kind of like you're bogged down in all the small day-to-day things, designing apps, designing UIs, optimizing different things, like with advertising or operating systems and stuff like that

or like making things better improving on past products. I can't imagine there's a lot of people out there who are like zooming out and seeing the forest for the trees and trying to figure out how can we make something new, right? Well, that was what was so disillusioning about the process. Growing up in Canada, idealizing Silicon Valley, the guy who started Atari, Nolan Bushnell, Alan K., Ted Nelson, these guys who were the first to kind of say, hey, the point of this technology is to make us the best version of ourselves.

They had the big views. This guy named Alan K., in many ways, a lot of what Steve Jobs did was what Alain. LNK came up with. Not many people know him, but he was like the true, true visionary. Who is he? He's kind of this early computing visionary. There's a place called Xerox Park. And so Xerox Park, like Xerox, the copyright company, they thought computers were going to put copyrighters their business. So they created this research center near Stanford in the middle of Silicon Valley called Xerox Park. And their idea was, let's dream up what the future of computing is so instead of somebody else putting out of us out of business at least we can we can do it.

The funny part of this story, Xerox never did anything. Right. With what came of it. But they basically, the modern computer with a graphical user interface, before that, it was just, it was just like letters and numbers. There was no images. There was no desktop. There was no mouse. There was no keyboard. And so Xerox Park, what you see when you sit down at your MacBook, Believe it or not, somebody actually had to come up with that paradigm. Before then, computers were the same as like typewriters. There's another company that's doing something unique and innovative that I want to share with you guys. What if your New Year's resolution could be put on autopilot?

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You can drag stuff and it would actually look like a document. Like a touchscreen? No, no. They didn't have touch back then. Just think of your Mac. Right. Oh, when you have files. With the mouse, like clicking and dragging stuff. They didn't have a mouse if you go actually far enough back.

Everything was just keyboard. It's the idea of literally having a mouse, the idea of having a cursor of dragging and dropping files and moving it around. And actually, you can be able to see that. That was literally all had to be invented. And at the time, not obvious. And so folks like Doug Engelbart, there's an amazing demo. You can look up. These are the people who inspired Alan Kay.

He had basically predicted, like, in 50 years ago, what computing was going to be. The possibility of networked communication that we could message each other. The idea of the mouse, believe it or not, that was like people were skeptical that people would ever use a mouse or that was even a good idea. But essentially at Xerox Park, they came up with the few. future of computing what would be a normal desktop and what's your MacBook today. Wow. And Apple and so on basically just got their ideas from Xerox Park and implemented it. No way.

What do people say to you when you're rubbing shoulders with some of these Silicon Valley Big shots that are like balls deep in companies like Apple and Facebook, social media companies, He's like what is their initial reaction to what you're doing? They laugh. I mean, they think it's naive. That's why it was so disillusioning for me. I thought it was this place of idealism. And I kind of believe the whole like, hey, they're trying to change the world for the better.

And you get there. It's not that at all. It's sterile. It's transactional. Yeah. It's like pre-Med and Goldman Sachs and McKinsey energy masquerading for, you know, you know, why not invent things? It's just, it's now the high status thing to do

is to be in startups or technology or Silicon Valley. Right. And so there's something that just shifts deeply in culture when you go from kind of hippies and idealists and nerds and people who almost do this because they don't know what else they'll do. Right. Right.

Like, they're not employable elsewhere. They're not, you know, they're not going to fit into normal culture. Now it's the exact opposite. It's the people who are the optimizers, the performers. And so when you try to come back to these deeper ideals that, you know, technology deeply shapes us and therefore, you know, we have a moral responsibility to make it in a way that's actually wise. You're laughed at. That's like you're laughed at the same way when you brought up healthy food back in the day. People are like, are you kidding me?

You think you're going to stop people if you're any junk food? You're going to stop people from eating the thing that is like evolutionary. they're built for it to be vulnerable to? Give me a break, right? You consider naive as hell. And so that's the first thing is people, they look down at you and consider you to be super naive. No, humans want to be addicted.

We want to be distracted. We want to be controlled. We want to be overstimulated. How are you going to stop that? And that just absolutely just fucking piss me off to no end. Because this episode is brought to you by old. Ultima Replenisher. Health is all about balance, like a salad with fries. So why not have balance in your hydration? With six essential electrolytes and no junk, Ultima provides balanced

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What the hell happened to the idea that, hey, we have a responsibility to try to make amazing things for people and improve their lives? When the hell did this become a pandering culture? When the hell did this become a culture of, we'll just do what's easiest for people? Yeah. When did this become a culture of like, we'll have the most cynical viewpoints of what human nature is? And that's the big problem here is the way computers are being designed is they're not optimistic at all about human nature. they're not optimistic at all about our ability to self-empower ourselves. They're completely cynical.

And so even if you think of a normal computer screen or blue light, they're like, yeah, whatever. People are never going to know about that. And I think the point of a podcast like yours and others is like, no, dude, people aren't dumb. We want things to change. We want the best things for ourselves and our families. And these guys are never going to do it because they just, it's full. far more profitable. It's far easier to just be cynical and panderer to people and sell them junk food. And I think that's the problem with computers today is they're junk food computers. I was kind of shocked when Jack Cruz told me that

out of all the contributing factors to all the diseases and cancers and obesity and diabetes and the stuff in the U.S., he thinks that food is like second or third on the rung as far as like key contributors to this stuff. He thinks that the light is this number one factor for all these explosion of diseases that are in our country. He thinks that because people, not only because the light is addictive and it's like you said, a dopamine slot. That's great. Dopamine sloppy sheet. And it's keeping people stuck on these screens and keeping them up late at night and keeping them distracted and keeping them in this sympathetic state. Exactly. that it combined with the fact that they're not outside they're staying inside all the time

is what's doing this and i i got on my phone and my laptop i got all the apps jack had to like make the screen red and i noticed i've already noticed a huge difference like i'm waking up at like i used to like have to drag my carcass out of bed at seven a m now i'm like wide awake at 630 and i've noticed because i'm laying in bed at night with my phone and it's like fully read and I'll try to I'll scroll through Instagram or like check my emails or my messages 10 minutes in I'm just done I can't do it anymore literally like falling asleep and when normally without that with the regular light on the screen I would probably stay up till 1 a.m. So there's definitely there's definitely a huge difference.

That's that's the big idea here is we're so numb and overstimulated. Yeah. And so bombarded we have normalized the way we feel. the way computers make us feel, the way it impacts us. And until you actually go out of your way, you don't realize what the hell, how tired I am, how much brain fog I have, how much it screws up, you're sleeping. I mean, I think this is why you feel so good

when you go camping and you just get away from everything for a week. Totally. Suddenly you start sleeping well, suddenly you get up with the sun, suddenly everything. I feel the same way. Like even when I go to like third world countries where there's not normal everyday conveniences that we have in the modern world here, like we where there's not traffic lights on every corner where you basically have to pull up to an

intersection and like look look at people to make sure like okay I'm going right or like you're not going to kill me you have to actually stay alive without using traffic lights and stop signs and and all this stuff it keeps you like in a in a um like an active state of mind where you're like always like fight or flight you're trying to figure out your way around and like instead of getting in the car, going down the street, stopping at the stoplight, scrolling on your phone, going to the grocery store, filling your car. Like, it kind of, I feel like society in general with how convenient everything is is sort of like compounding onto all of this stuff and making us slower and fatter and dumber.

It's, it's almost crazy that we've ended up this way because if you were diabolical and you were to design a society, you would come up with something similar to that. Yeah. Check up everybody's nervous system such that they can't really think or feel they're just reacting to things and give them something in front of them that can give them endless stimulation. That's an endless slot machine, a variable reward and put their physiology in a state between the blue light, the fact that it is bright light and it's flickering such that you're always craving stimulation. Boom. Boom. Brave New World right there.

That is exactly, have you read Brave New World or Neil Postman? No, I haven't. I almost want to read it out loud. It's so good at describing this. Let's see if I could pull this up. He's pulling it up on his daylight computer right now. We got a little shot. You can show you how it works.

I think so cool, man. Okay, so this guy named Neil Postman wrote this book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. Okay. I think it's forward to the book just describes what we're talking about so incredibly. So I'm going to read it out. We were keeping her eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves.

The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we at least had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another, slightly older, slightly west-not, less well-known, equally chilling, Aldous Huxley's brave new world. Contrary to common belief, even amongst the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophecy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Brigg brother is required to deprive

people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. as he saw it people will come to love their oppression to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think what orwell feared were those who would ban books what hoxley feared was there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one who wanted to read one orwell feared those who would deprive us of information Hoxley feared those who would give us so much that would be reduced to passivity and egoism Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us Huxley feared the truth would be drowned out in a sea of irrelevance

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture Huxley feared we'd become a trivial culture preoccupied with some equivalent of the philees, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World revisited, the civil liberties and rationalists who were ever on the alert to a pro's tyranny failed to take an account

man's almost infinite appetite for distractions. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they're controlled by inflicting pleasure. in short orwell feared that that what we hate will ruin us Huxley feared that we what we love will ruin us this book is about the possibility that Huxley and not Orwell was right that's it's spot on it really is whether it be the perspective of government whether it be the perspective of

these multi-trillion dollar tech companies that, you know, hit their earnings and please Wall Street by ever having our attention. The setup we have right now with computers is we're passive. They control us. They dominate our lives. They stimulate us. They keep us away from actually thinking. Because guess what? If you could actually think, you could start questioning the system. And so we have, in my opinion, an incredible societal setup to have, no freedom and not even know it because we're so busy indulging in information and stimulation and addiction and distraction and so there's a there's a way in which reforming computers is actually core to reforming freedom is core to reforming our ability to think for ourselves and what i got

really interested in was the idea that the actual physical hardware of a computer plays a big role with the blue light, with the flickering, with the emissive light in keeping us enraptured and stuck. And so, yeah, my big idea was if you were to change that, you were like kind of what you're hinting towards, if you could change the display technology to not have that physiological and rapturing effect. Maybe we could start to change computers from being these portals and slot machines and these black holes of all of our attention and time into just another object or tool that you find useful and you put away.

Do you think people in Silicon Valley and people that work at these giant tech companies are aware of this? Is there anyone who's aware of this? And if they are, what do you think, what is their view on it? Well, I think that's what's so heartbreaking about this is they're the most conscious about this.

People don't know this fact. I think it should be absolutely well known. Steve Jobs didn't allow his own kids to have iPhones or iPads until they were 16. But he is happy as hell to sell it to your kids. How is that not on the front page of everything? Is that real? That's for real? Yeah, you can look it up. Wow.

How is that not on the front page of everything that this guy who invented it knew what its negative impact was on a developing brain? And he's happy to sell it to the rest of you. You look at Mark Zuckerberg, he doesn't allow his kids to have social media or phones. Right. He himself uses an, you know, an e-paper tablet, but he's trying to get you to put the screen to be your entire life. Steve Jobs co-founder of Apple did not allow his children to use iPads or other technology at home. Wow. In this 2011 interview at the New York Times, he said that we don't allow iPads in the home.

We think it's too dangerous for them in effect. And he recognized the iPad's addictive nature and believed it would be difficult for children to resist the allure. Wow. Oh, wow. Holy shit. Yep. And Gates did not allow his children cell phones until they were 14 years old. Prohibit him during meals and before bed.

Wasn't there something, though? Did you hear about the, I don't know if it was a study or if it was an article that came out about, um, surgeons that played video games were like 90% better at like performing surgery. It might have even been brain surgeons. Can you find, yeah, surgeons who played video games study? You just have to type in surgeon and play video games to find it. The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century. Scroll down.

There you go. No, no. It was the link below that. Yeah. Oh, wow. 2017. So what's the, what's the background? video games have become extensively integrated in popular culture anecdotal observations of young surgeons suggest that video game playing contributes to performance in contributes to performance excellence in laparoscopic surgery training benefits for surgeons who play video games should be quantifiable is there the hypothesis is there a potential link between video game play and surgical skill and suturing and I guess can you go down to the result

Yeah, yeah. Past video game play in excess of three hours a week correlated with 37% fewer errors and 27% or 27% faster completion. Overall, top gun score was 33% better for video game players and 42% better if they played more than three hours a week. How fucking wild is that shit, dude? You got to create a video game console. Dude, I think that's the point here is like it's not to be Luddites and throw this stuff away. Right. So you completely know we can't have technology. Right, right.

This stuff is incredible. Like playing a video game is not like scrolling mindlessly through social media. It's way different. And that exactly. It's how do we carve out the better for you parts of computing? Yeah. And remove all the ways in which it's, it's predatory. Yes.

That it's not been optimized for human health, for human psychology, for any of it. And early days computers, they were not like this. Like you sat down with a computer and you like could do your work and then you put it away. It's the problem now is there always on you all the time. And these algorithms are so incredibly good at finding out exactly what you like and then just feeding it to you till ever. And yeah. I love this quote, which is back in the day, Gary Kasparov, you know, the world's best chess player was playing. deep blue this AI by IBM and the famous thing here is for the first time ever a computer had

beaten the world's best chess player and that computer deep blue that AI that beat Gary Kasparov back then that was a million times less powerful than the AIs and computers we have today so you now today have a million times more powerful computer every minute playing playing a game against you, which is addict you and get you to spend as much time as possible. That's what they have on their internal dashboard. Their OKRs, how much time, how much engagement do we get from a customer? And you don't even know you're playing a game against this. If Gary Kasparov lost back then, what chance do we have today?

And I don't think people realize it because it just seems like, oh, I'm just reading something or watching something. They do not understand the system of control that. And also he was a one. he was playing the game. He was aware he was playing the game. We're not. We have no. And so that's, it's like, when you start to realize actually how much this benefits the current status quo of society to have people this way, no wonder they don't want to change computers. And you can't come out and suddenly if you're Tim Cook and say, hey, this is the iPad healthy edition. You know, it no longer has blue light and no longer flickers. Because you're going to be like, so every, iPad before was not healthy. Like, you're not, you're not going to come out and yeah, that's not, yeah, right.

jeopardize your entire business and every, everything you sell. Yeah, I see what you're saying. And so if more people just knew that so many of the people in Silicon Valley don't allow their kids to use phones and iPads and social media and unrestricted access, they're all incredibly careful. Has no one trying to buy you out or silence? you just to shut this down like apple coming hey anjan here's a 10 million dollars just go away we we got we got some early offers to to buy ourselves out from some one of the big guys but really yeah but

that's and then what was the like what was the terms of it like they wanted to buy like basically take it and you walk away yeah yeah they wanted to completely take it over oh my god but we got a bigger mission here so so who are some of the people that are taking you seriously other than jack How did you meet Jack, by the way? I've been a long time follower of Jacks, but believe it or not, my dad. Oh, no way. My dad actually emailed Jack's saying, hey. My son has built a blue light free computer.

And then, you know, the rest is history. Wow. But, yeah. How long ago was that? Early 2023. Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind.

But I started working on this mid-2018. and the basic idea I started with is, okay, let's reimagine computing from a blank sheet, and how do we make it wiser and healthier? And, okay, so how do you make an operating system that isn't addicting and distracting and just trying to steal all your attention? And so there's this whole side of the software. And then at the hardware, how do we kind of change its ergonomics? How do we change the way it emits radiation? But the biggest one was how do we change your relationship to its life?

How do we make it get rid of its junk light? It's blue light and flicker. Make it possible so you can be outside so you can get natural light, which is the best form of light there is. And then over time, how can we have a bit of healing light with photobiomodulation, which is some of these longer infrared frequencies? We don't have that in this version, but that's something that we're heading towards. And so the journey here was basically,

basically creating a computer screen that doesn't produce light yet you can see it. Right. So this is essentially, so from what I can pick up from this is it looks like when you, when you're reading text on it or you're looking at any sort of graphics, it looks like, yeah, it's like one of those Kindles or the, what's the other one called? It looks like a Kindle paper light, right? where it looks like real ink on there. But you can essentially zoom in and zoom out

and move around like a hundred times faster than you can on any of those Kindle E ink tablets. Yeah, so the big breakthrough here is basically normal computers. They're fast. You can do your email. You can do your docs. You can do everything on it. And it's your question of like,

who's into this or who likes this. Right. But the problem is they have blue light. They flicker. Yeah. And you can't use them outside in the sun. Right. And my whole thing here is that deeply actually affects your

sleep, your metabolism, your physiology. We could get into that, but yeah, with Jack and Alexis. And there's this small niche of computers, um, like the Kindle and so on. But the problem is they're so incredibly slow. You can't do much on it. You can read Harry Potter. The actual screen technology of the Kindle, it's called E-ink or E-paper, literally only can refresh at one or two FPS. And so, You can take notes. You can read Harry Potter and change the page. But you can't scroll. You can't type.

Super laggy. You can't have video. It's super, super laggy. And so the core thing that we invented is a way to make these paper-like reflective computer displays. On a Kindle. What that thing is doing. No chance at all.

So basically what we did is we made it as fast as an iPad. But it is a screen you can use outside of this. Crazy, dude. And so. And this looks. For people that are watching this, you can see it looks great right now. We're in this. This is kind of a dimly lit podcast studio.

But if you go outside, it pops like 10 times more and looks like the contrast and the text. It just brightens up when you're in the sunlight. The core insight here was normal computer screens are artificial. They try to be, they're like a flashlight. Yes. They shine light in your eyes to stand out. That's great for Netflix and video games and making really overstimial. stimulating colors. But that's not how it works in nature. Everything in nature is reflective.

You know, it's like a piece of paper, right, whatever. You're looking outside. And so the point here is to make something that's more natural, that's reflective. And that's why a normal screen, you can't see it in the sun, because it's trying to compete with nature. It's trying to make its flashlight bright enough that you could see it, but there's no chance versus sunlight. And that's why you can't see anything. Your screen's covered in glare. Right. But because we're a reflective display, we're in harmony with nature. So we're actually using the sunlight. So when you're outside, the sunlight is literally hitting this, reflecting off of that,

and that's what you're able to see. And I think that's the big philosophical change is how do you make technology that's more natural and in harmony with our nature and nature rather than trying to be artificial and over stimulating. So correct me if I'm wrong, but early on when Apple, was making iPads and iPhones, there were companies that were competing to figure out what type of screen technology they were going to use.

They didn't know if they were going to do the emissive or the reflective, right? And this goes back to Japan. There was a company in Japan, I think that had the reflective stuff and it ended up not working out. Yeah, people just assume the way iPhones and iPads look today,

like that's the only way computers can look. But if you go back to the Xerox Park days, what kind of what we were saying before in the early days, there was actually two viable paths to computing. One was this emissive immersive displays, which you take it to its logical progression. That's VR and AR, you know, from what we have now,

which is maximally immersive, maximalist. And this other trajectory to computing has really kind of, no one's really known about it. It's not really the big one. It's kind of withered. This is, it was called at the time, com computing. The basic idea was computers that just feel like analog objects but happen to have computational powers. Right. So if you think of like in Harry Potter, Tom Riddle's diary or the newspaper

or the Marauders map, they just look like analog objects like paper or books. But if you think about it, they're computational. They're magical. And the point of computing is simply to animate things anima is like the word soul is to simply give a soul to analog objects um to animate them and that trajectory of what reflective or paper like displays are is a way to basically make matter movable that's what this is this is not a portal this is literally a piece of paper that is you know, animating. That whole trajectory

is what we're trying to bring back in computing, trying to make, you know, more mainstream. And the way I got, the way I came up with this

is I found a really old Japanese technology that's been thrown away because, you know, at the time, they were like, oh, it's not colorful. If you don't have color,

it doesn't matter. It's, it had all of these flaws that kind of made it not viable. And in the 30 years since, there's been just, some crazy professors in the Netherlands and Germany, especially in Japan, that have just sat there and whacked away a problem after problem after problem.

There's a paper that comes out in 1997 solving one of the core problems of this technology. Another comes out in 2002, 2008, blah, blah, blah. And basically, when I started working on this in mid-2018, I just got very lucky that finally enough of these problems have been solved that if you were to put together all of these different technologies, kind of what I was able to come up with. Suddenly, this old Japanese withered technology could be viable again. And that's ultimately what I was able to pull together and create here with live paper is resurrecting an old Japanese technology kind of now finally making it good enough. And our whole premise here is now you can make phones, laptops,

monitors. You can make all of computing now interactive and dynamic, but they no longer need to be portals they no longer have to have blue light they no longer need to flicker they no longer need to be addicting and distracting um they can just be a tool that you can use kind of to your example of you know the games and the surgeons you can use the parts of computing that are useful for you but it's no longer going to have that compulsiveness that draw in your life yes um had there ever been any um like legit studies or like placebo controlled trials on people with iPhone screens and um iPad screens and like people who don't do it or like have there ever been any like actual measurable comparisons on like how this shit actually affects us. I so wish there was way more and way better

academic research about this. Like you'd be surprised by how little there is and how bad the quality of what exists is. But some of the things that are like pretty stark are there's a phenomenon called screen apnea. So there's sleep apnea, which is. when you know you go to sleep you stop breathing and you and it has all your tongue right yeah you basically stop breathing you're choking for a while right the point being is it has you know that lack of oxygen has deep deep impact on the rest of your life so there's this there's a phenomena that they've labeled screen apnea which is when you're using a normal emissive flickering display on your iPhone your iPad whatever your breathing rate slows down your breathing volume your title volume

volume gets shallow. So we are all literally a little bit more in a sympathetic response because the way we're actually affected at a breathing physiological level when we use these displays. Wow, dude. That's freaky. That's why we feel a little bit more stressed when we use these things. We don't even notice that, that it's actually the way we're interacting with the light. So it's something to do with not just the light, but us, it's like turning off our frontal cortex, right? Like keeping us in that sympathetic. So us being in that sympathetic state sitting there and just scrolling on a phone, it's essentially, it's like similar to being like you're kind of asleep, but you're not. And when that's a people, when that affects you're breathing, I guess like, I guess you would have noticed it.

but how was that we just assume it's normal how was that discovered uh i think people started to realize how much more stress there is when you use computers and they were trying to figure out what what's going on here yeah and uh oh yeah they they can measure your intranasal temperature from afar

right and they can literally tell when you get a notification when it goes bing because there's actually actually a slight stress response and it shows up as a temperature change on the inside of your really and so dude there's people out there who are so addicted to vr they literally like go home from work and they strap into that headset helmet for like hours until like the wee hours of the morning and like live in this alternate universe where they're like playing sims and playing like house i guess in vr with other people doing shit like going to strip clubs getting lab dances like like basically like grand theft auto but in VR and like I can't imagine how much worse that's got to be

it's it's it's the end state of this all yeah my point of this silicon valley pandering culture what's more than getting people live in their fake fantasy are totally artificial worlds and completely just indulge and masturbate yourself to death that's the amusing ourselves to death that's what neil postman is saying it's our it's our pleasures we'll oppress ourselves to death in our own pleasures and the possibility here is to create more sovereign computing that isn't going to be maximalist and immersive it's not about computers it's about having the least computer possible and having the rest of your life your actual relationships nature and so that's what we're trying to create is we call it like solar punk computing um or a third time alone have you heard of solar

punk or looked into no it's worth at google is that real yeah Solar punk? It's the best capture. For me, the way to describe the Silicon Valley technology is it's the gray alien timeline. The great alien timeline. Yeah. Explain that. And then you can either have another timeline that's like the unibomber or the collapse timeline where you completely reject technology and we get all super primitive.

Or what I think is the other way is the third timeline, the solar punk timeline, where it's this combination of. Is this what we're supposed to be looking at, these pictures? Yeah. It kind of, it's, the photos will give you an aesthetic. But the point here is. A technological jungle, a technological rainforest. What it looks like to actually humanely combine technology, nature, and magic. Wow.

The mystical and the spiritual. Yeah. And the problem with the VR future with the basic technology trajectory today is, there is no respect for nature. There is no respect for the body. There is no respect for the spiritual or the transcendence. And that's the gray alien timeline. Yeah, it's almost like, you know, the most logical, the most logical way to innovate from a keyboard and like buttons is to create this screen that you can interact with and touch.

And that was like the iPhone one, right? I remember when that thing came out. I don't know if you, do you remember, did you get one? Yeah. That was so mind-bendingly amazing. like that thing blew my fucking my world apart like seeing that that thing existed being able to hold that and like text people by doing did did did did on a screen scrolling scrolling that was like and it was like from there that was the start of it it was like we it's kind of like the combustion engine right like

once you create the first combustion engine you just expect expand on that and extrapolate on that and keep making it better and better until you have like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari or something. But like to create something completely on a separate timeline or something on a completely separate technology like anti-gravity, you're not going to get to anti-gravity from combustion engines. So like it's going to take something so crazy and like a. like a ground roots movement or like some sort of something big would have to happen to compel society or Silicon Valley or all these companies to sort of jump ship to a whole other a whole other like goal of what they're doing with technology right because like right now

they're combustion engines and like here you are trying to create anti-gravity You can't there's no bridge, right? Like there's no bridge from what Apple's doing to what you're doing right here. Like you said before, like they how can you release an iPad health when every single piece of technology you ever released relies on this blue light stuff? It's kind of like it's kind of intuitive. So. So yeah, that's kind of just like gets back to my question of who like what kind of people in that world are like seeing the light. no pun intended here and like like wow you know like maybe this is something that we really have to start taking seriously and start investing like tons of money into right um it's it's bottom up it's grassroots yeah it's those of us who are educating ourselves through these podcasts um learning actually what leads to human health learning actually how we work and looking for better, healthier, safer choices. And it's not going to happen with the gray alien timeline, the big tech timeline,

they are not, I don't think they're going to be able to move in this direction. They're just so set in their ways. The fact that the people running these companies, they're going too fast. What they're doing for their kids is making these healthier, safer choices. But for the big corporations, the Titanic's that they're running, they're not even attempting it at all. tells you how much, you know, they're not even in control of the machine or the trend there. There's a way you can kind of think of it. Like, maybe even humans are not in control.

It's like the machines are in control. And they're taking us down this path of where we are simply, you know, the sex organs of the machine, as Marcus L. McClue puts it. Yeah. We're just trying to create this, you know, techno-dispopia future from them. And that's where the matrix and all of us being in VR. all the time is is it actually are the human are we as humans actually in charge or are we being dragged by the machines into that timeline and so who's into this it's those of us who say no fuck that we're not passively going to let ourselves be dragged into this timeline of absolute human disempowerment

yeah and so it's got to be grassroots and that's kind of the worst parts of that's like the worst part of capitalism right is because you it's such a big machine that's all relying on on profit and money and these board the board that basically lives in charge of the biggest investors of these companies that like all they care about is the P&L statement and the profits and are they going to go public and then like from then on out you just have people that are accountable to them that are just trying to climb the ladder and get a promotion and get a raise like none of these people are going to walk out into the middle of the square and you know say that everything's fucked everything's wrong we need to like turn the ship around because that's gonna it'll be too late

you're gonna yeah it'd be too well not only would be too late but you're also would be sacrificing yourself in your own career and you know putting food on the table for yourself and your family so it's like i don't know how you i don't know how you turn that ship around i think you just got to create your own arc yeah yeah and it's i think uniquely possible to do that today if we're just got to create your own arc yeah yeah and it's i think uniquely possible to do that today if we're tried to this before, we didn't, funny enough, we didn't have the technology to be able to communicate and aggregate and teach each other and educate. Right. And so in a weird way, these same pipes that are, you know, addicting us and manipulating that are also the same ways

that we can actually self-empower. And so the point of the solar punk timeline, this third timeline is, yeah, how do we create, how do we refactor this entire stack to actually be in alignment with human flourishing? You know, payments, identity, banking systems, currencies, accounting, computers, internet protocols, networks. How can we make all of that such that it's not stuck to this rent-seeking techno-capitalist kind of machine gray-alian timeline? When I say gray-alian timeline, you had Michael Masters on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, familiar with them?

Yeah, so. I love that theory, dude. So for me- That's my favorite theory. For me, that is actually what the current Silicon Valley tech trend is. is it's the gray alien timeline. That's, if you follow Mark Andresen and Mark Zuckerberg and so on, you end up at gray aliens. That's my, that's my feeling is that is the best way to describe what that current conventional timeline we're all being sucked into us.

Because it's a complete dissociation of the body, the soul of emotion. It's the complete overemphasis on the brain and the intellect. Well, what Michael Masters kind of explains, he's a, uh, an anthropologist. So the way I understood it is that he's explaining how if you go look at primates, early, early primates, right? They have these big bodies, these like small like bulging forward foreheads, these big like mouth, chin, skelet, you know, jaw lines down here. And then as they progressed, you know, they start to look more and more like what we look today. We look more like baby chimps.

Like when a pimp is first born, it's got like more of like sits up straight. It's got kind of a bigger head, more proportionate with the body. And that's a phenomenon called pedomorphism. The idea is the farther down the timeline of evolution you get, the adults look more like the babies of the ancestors or the children of the ancestors. So I guess his theory is that in 100,000 years to a million years, If we were to survive, he thinks we would look like those things on that book right there with the big eye and the big head and the little muscleless bodies. And what I'm arguing is that doesn't need to be an inevitability.

That's the key thing is what's there? There's just like a complete disregard for life, for the body, for the soul, for emotion, for feeling. Everything is being thrown away in that gray alien timeline for optimization, for efficiency, for progress. whatever that means, but you lose your soul, you lose the actual parts of what it means to be human. And so what I'm actually arguing is, I see what you're saying now. The gray alien timeline doesn't need to be an inevitability. We can create our own other timeline if enough of us come together where the body actually matters, the soul matters, feeling matters, emotion matters. And we can design our world, our technologies and so on in a total different way.

that that to me is the core thing here is that doesn't need to be an inevitability right that we all end up as emaciated gray little beings right with these big bulbous eyes and giant heads the top but well they do talk telepathically which is pretty cool that's uh you know it's also crazy is there's lots of um documented cases where these things came down and talked to children yeah at schools and told them to beware of technology technology is going to end up killing you guys yeah the ral school in zimbabwe yeah that's fast Yeah, dude. Crazy. But what are they talking about technology? You know, there's so much. Like they're talking about atom bombs, thermonuclear bombs? Are they talking about screens? Right. I mean, we talk about nukes and things like that as being one of the potential great filters. You know, every civilization that comes to be, do they blow themselves up? Right. I think the other great filter is computers and AI and machines. You know, are we able to actually use them and use them effectively as tools? Or do we become the servants and them, the math? And, you know, we either kill ourselves in the process or completely dehumanize ourselves. Right. Do you, do you, um, buy into Jack's idea that this is like a, a real MK Ultra 2 5.0 mind control thing where they basically, they know they're doing this to people. And it's easier to control society if everyone's got these screens in front of them all the time. And they can manipulate what the truth is because it's, you know, right now, like I've been saying

this a lot lately that like the truth is really really flexible and slippery nowadays like it's really hard to know what's true with social media and there's always news popping up on every single app on your phone all the time and there's always different narratives to everything that's going on so it's like it's impossible it's impossible to know what's real anymore i i think it's the banality of evil. Do you know the Hannah Arendt quote? No, but I'm familiar with Hannah Arendt. It's basically she was like one of the most heartbreaking things about the world is the banality of evil. If the problems that we have around us, if evil was committed because there were simply just a lot of really, really, really evil people, the solution's a little simpler.

Shoot them. Find the evil people and shoot them. She said, what? She said, What's actually terrifying, what's truly terrifying, is when you see much of the world is good or well-meaning or at least neutral people committing evil. Right. Because it's the structure. It's the game. It's not necessarily the people. I think that's the big thing here is, did anybody intend? Did anybody design this?

Maybe. but also potentially what's scarier is nobody designed this and this is just where it ended up right and it's absolutely convenient for all the people who are in power or want things to be the way it is or disempower us and you know from future machines looking to make humans their slaves or disempower us it's a damn good setup for that yeah man that makes a lot of sense you know it's like the question can evil people the evil people sleep good at night right they're probably do because there's no angel on the other shoulder telling them what they're doing is wrong it's probably like they're doing exactly what they think is the right thing to do and then you have

people like i think hona orrent was she the one that was she was a jewish woman who dated the nazi and the guy the nazi that she fell in love with i guess like operated a train transportation on a train and the guy was just taking orders he was just doing his job like and that everybody he knew did the same thing in his his world. So like, is he evil? Wow, man. That's why I think your point here of like, who's into this? How is this going to be? It's just we one person at a time looking up, looking out, saying, I'm not okay with this. I think we literally have to create this third timeline brick by brick. Otherwise, this existing timeline is, is structurally evil,

regardless of how many people you shoot. Yeah. And that's the part that makes it powerful. it's not even about people anymore. There's a machine running there. Yeah. That's fucking terrifying, bro. Have you heard of the concept of egregors? Yes, but I forgot what it is. It's the idea that we as humans are doing things and, you know, there's a concept like,

oh, markets are like the invisible hand that you end up creating this like intelligence that's able to like, you know, figure out things better than we could on our own, you know, figures out what's like the ideal price for bread through enough buyers and sellers in a market, blah, blah, blah. the point of an aggregore is what happens when the intelligence that comes out of our human behaviors and small individual choices is actually something that's not necessarily beneficial what if it's actually like it's like you're birthing like an entity in the new sphere at the higher levels that starts to actually prey on us and use us for its own goals and so there's really the concept of like moloch comes from and so on that there's a lot of like there's a concept of like moloch comes from and so on that there are some like big entities or aggregars or so on that is using technology to get us to to kind of domesticate us to disempower us to make us into the you know the future the matrix future where we're nothing but batteries and they're actually the ones in charge we're not even in charge anymore and it recruits capitalism and technology and whatever that machine is to kind of perpetuate. Hmm. Kind of like ethereal demons that are here to just destroy society. And whether they're actually actual demons, or other more of these like the intelligent hand working in the worst possible way?

Right, right. What if they're actually doing whether they are real things or not? Yes. So we can't just like wait. We got to do something. And the problem with technology. is it's so hard to build computers. It's so hard to make technological things. It requires so much capital. You have to kind of be part of the system or game to be able to get the resources. At that point,

you're fully captured. Right. And so one of the hardest parts here in kind of creating an arc or a third timeline or those of us trying to get outside of that, you know, gray alien inevitability, is how do you actually get the resources. How do you find enough people? How do you find your own tribe to be able to actually start making some alternatives? And so what have you noticed since you, first of all, how long have you had your first prototype of this? So I started working on this mid-2018 and we didn't have the proof of the first proof of concept of that I could prove to do the display technology was near the end of 2021. So it took a while. So I've had it. And our first tablet came at the beginning of 2023.

So I've had it for almost two years now. And since then, is this basically all you use for your computer? Do you ever have to use like a laptop or a MacBook or anything? Yeah, it's, I'd say we're still a generation or two away from it being able to do everything. So I still have to use my iPhone and MacBook. Right. But I try to do as much as possible on a daylight. What have you or people that you've sold this to?

Like what kind of people are reaching out to you and like trying to get their hands on these or even like trying to invest with you? It's a lot of parents actually. Really? Yeah. I'd say the biggest communities are people first who, funny enough, they don't even care about any of this. They're just, they're just want performance. They're lawyers, their hedge fund managers, their researchers, whatever it is. And one of the advantages of making a computer screen that's more natural is if you're spending all day on a computer screen for your job, you're able to do it without your eyes hurting or getting headaches or screwing up your sleep.

So there's a ton of people who basically just read and write a lot who are buying this as a performance tool. It's like soccer cleats if you're a lawyer, instead of using tennis shoes. But the other main groups are people who are conscious of health and blue light and circadian rhythms. and they see how much it impacts them and they want a healthier computer. And the third group is, and the one I think we could really have a ton of impact in society is parents.

Wanting a non-zombifying computer for their kid. I mean, if you've seen the videos of kids when you take away their iPads, it's insane. I know what it's like. They turn into little devils. But with this, the idea is that if you were going to replace an iPad, can you get the iPad games on here? So that's actually one, when you talk about how are people using this, that's one of my favorite validations that this approach and more natural technology evens the playing field is we've had people put really addicting games on this.

Put TikTok, put Instagram, even put YouTube on this. And they get bored. Right. When you put kids on a daylight with whatever was the most addicting thing elsewhere, they get bored of it. And there's just something so fascinating about evening the playing field such that, you know, you can engage in these things, but they're no longer as addicting or as compulsive. Right. And that to me is what's magical. When's the last time, you know, you've gotten bored of YouTube?

When's the last time you've like... You never get bored. You just run out of time. You just run out of time. Yeah. And so when, like, it's a fascinating feeling to using YouTube on this and getting bored. So that's essentially the experience, the feedback that you've gotten from people who have given this to their kids. kids like they'll at least when they want to get the iPad they can get that fix of having that thing in their hands and playing on it or whatever and then after an hour they just they're done with it they put it down and go outside or go do something else and i think that is the best way to think about technology is i'll tell you what one of my favorite

things somebody told me is they got this for their kid and they said what makes what makes this so what makes this so compelling is to my son it is more interesting than picking his nose or bullying his sister, but less interesting than the backyard. So at a certain point, he gets bored, and he goes and plays outside. Right. And that's the point. Yes. It's like the least amount of computer we need.

Do your homework, listen to an audiobook, you know, play some games that help you learn math or whatever. Oh, you can connect headphones to this? Yeah. Really? Yeah, you can. That's fucking cool. So one of the hopes of this is to be able to carve out the parts of computing that are actually like beneficial. Right. It's optimizing for productivity.

No? I'd say that is the cardinal sin of conventional tech is it's just optimizing for productivity. The point of... Well, it's optimizing for distractions, right? It's optimizing. I think you made the point before you would go on a computer and try to research something and you end up with 100,000 tabs open and you're not getting anything done. but with this, you can actually complete a task because you're not like,

you're not sitting there and enjoying like, oh, this is so nice being in front of this thing. I can turn on my music here. If I get bored, I can go to Instagram real quick, then come back. And then like, you're just like, you've got to get it done. Yeah. But my point is maybe I'm saying it in a bit of a semantic way is the productivity is what comes out. Once you make this, you remove all the crap.

Okay. I see. The computer is not optimizing for productivity. What it's optimizing for is minimalism. for constraint for doing the least. And then it turns out then humans, we just are more productive. I struggle to read a book.

I go sit outside and away from my phone and everything. Suddenly, I'm reading that book. It's like the most productive place for me in the world is an airplane with no Wi-Fi. Because suddenly the thing I had in my hand that I've been procrastant for six months is more interesting than picking my nose and I start to do it.

And I think that's the point here is like so many of us feel like we're, low willpower, we're distracted, you know, we're like, we're not able to be the best versions of ourselves. And I think actually all it takes is designing our environment, redesigning our computers, and suddenly you're able to read books, you're able to finish things, you're able to, you know, think, write, draw, make poetry, whatever it may be. I think all of those things can emerge once we're not always stuffing our face with information and being overstimulated. And so that's the goal of creating computers that, you know,

allow us to discover cool things a human does. It's like a nice, big, juicy bone-in ribeye with no sides. All you get is just the big juicy steak, no bullshit fries or fucking hamburgers or chicken nuggets. Just the good shit.

There's a lot of carnivore people who are into daylight. Oh, is there? Yeah. It's the same principle, right? Like, how do we rethink things from like an evolutionary perspective and what's natural? And that's what this is. It's like, okay, humans evolved or ocular system or eyes.

Yeah, no, that's another big thing that I actually had an eye doctor on here telling me that like the prevalence of myopia has like shot through the stratosphere in the last decade or two after ever since like, you know, phone screens have become a thing. There's more there's more near-sided people than ever. Right. I think that's what's powerful about this third timeline is the principles are to get. back to what is most transcendent and real. And that's like the natural, like nature. Like, there's a, there's a reason. This is tried and tested throughout billions of years and millions of years. Yeah. Right. There's an arrogance as a human to think we can, you know, figure it all in our own and do better. And I think what's best is when we use technology to kind of come back

to core human universals and wisdom. Yeah. What's it, well, so what has it been like, and I'm, I assume you didn't have like a background and like venture capital when you got into this so what was that like for you getting into that world and like going out and trying to raise money for it yeah i mean first i uh i spent my entire life savings to develop the technology to start because i wasn't even sure whether it's possible to you know invent this type of a healthier display um so first i had to kind of go all in and once i saw okay it works i try to put some money together to to bring this to production and into the world completely rejected by all of venture capital and how did you get these meetings um it's that's you have to meet the right person who introduces you the right

person introduces you the right person it's just yeah it's its own little network and so on so i tried to to get into it and um you got to go to go to some parties you just get laughed out yeah i i i just Over and over again, I just heard the thing, which was, hey, which of the sins does this cater to? Because that's how we invest, you know, is this gluttony? Is this envy? Like, we invest, we think, you know, the best consumer products are those who cater to sins. You know, you're a Boy Scout, if you think people want healthier, more humane computers. And so, you're trying to compete against Apple and Amazon. and Microsoft and all the big tech companies, are you crazy? Right.

And so Silicon Valley, which is supposed to be this idealistic place, like I thought there would still be people who, you know, they're already making these choices for their kids. I thought, you know, they'd all say, you know, I know I do this for my kid, but I just like, I don't know if others are going to do it.

It's going to be niche. Like, yeah, I don't know, man. And everybody was basically cynical. So we couldn't raise any money from Silicon Valley institutions. So all the money we pulled together to be able to fund this is just from individuals, from people who actually believe that this is what, you know, they want their kids to grow up with. They don't want their kids to grow up with VR. They don't want to grow up with more screens in their life that are sucking you.

So how many have you created so far? So we've- Or how many of you guys shipped out or whatever? Our first batch is 5,000 units. And this is the one I got as part of the first batch? Yeah. Wow, dude. Yeah, I imagine there's got to be a lot of like hardcore early adopters to this.

Yeah, the people who are into this is like I said, it's like people who have to use a computer screen all day. So they buy it for performance. You know, they read all the time. But yeah, a lot of it is folks who are, you know, this is the computer they use now. So they can, you can be outside in the sun. Like, why not be in your happy place? Right, exactly. You know, at nighttime, you know, sometimes you still want to use a computer.

But now you don't, this is completely blue light free. So it produces no light at all. It's a reflective screen, but we optionally at nighttime, we put tiny little holes into the reflective material such that you get a flicker-free, blue light-free, a light at nighttime. I could show what that's like. And so people use it as their...

Steve, you got that on there? Okay, there we go. Let me get something here. So yeah, you can see this is producing no light at all. This is like a piece of paper. Yep. And so then what we have... So this is the back light that you can turn on.

This is the light. So we built our own custom LED. So it's completely blue light free and it's flicker free. We made this spectrum similar to a campfire. Wow. And so even when you put like your iPhone into red mode or you put it into the night mode, underlying it is still a blue LED. Yeah.

It's just tinting over it, right? So it's just tinting over. So you still have a small percentage, 20%, more of the blue light coming through. Here is actually at the hardware level. We're driving the LEDs differently, so it's direct current. So there's no flicker. So a normal iPhone or iPad LED is driven by something called PWM,

which is what causes it to flicker. And so this is not flickering at all. And believe it or not, to make that just even one change was a big deal. What does the little fire thing do? Is that a little flame? that changes the spectrum but you have that changes the spectrum what do you mean so basically if you're all the way if you're all the way over to the left it's just using show us on show us on that one here so people can see okay so basically when you're here this is completely blue light free and just

using our amber LEDs okay um if you go all the way here this is what an iPad is oh you can make it blue light We actually have a second set of LEDs that are white and blue. And so if you want to, you could use it this way. But it's kind of almost to make... MK Ultra Mode. It's, yeah. It's almost to make the difference extremely stark to you. Wow.

How big of a deal is. That's crazy. So it's a two different set of LEDs that are underneath it. So why would you ever want to have that mode on? Just because some people are not as militant in us. So they kind of, you know, like if you go here, instead of looking bright orange and amber, it looks a little bit, you know, of a nicer shade. Like maybe if you just stay awake a little bit, like an extra hour, get a little bit more reading done.

You just put a little blue in there. I don't recommend using it. I use it completely just in the pure amber. Some people, they don't mind 10% more blue light for something that they think looks nicer. But yeah, the core idea here is you use it this way. No light being produced at all. It's like looking at a piece of paper or you can use it like that and it's completely blue light-free. Have you ever met with RFK and said RFK,

say we got to get these things mandated. We got to get the anti-blue light. Like, you know, he's like the big health guy working with Trump now. So supposedly we're going to make America healthy again. I think that would be huge if we could get kids everywhere to move away from normal blue light emissive screens and tablets to things like this that are healthy. They're in schools now. You know that. They have laptops literally an iPad for kids for literal kindergartners.

Look at the rates of ADHD, autism, so on. There's lots of reasons, but it's fascinating to see it. No, dude, it's scary as fuck. It has the point. It's computers, especially for kids, are literally rewiring the way we are. This is an experiment we've never run before. It is literally rewiring. Our memory or rewards or dopamine system.

It's crazy to me that, well, I mean, yeah, it is just crazy that no, like, serious institution has come out. and actually like done any kind of like extrapolation hypothesis on what this is going to do to human beings in a hundred years, right? Like what are the downstream effects of this? For aliens. It's fucking scary, dude. It is. And why don't you give us like a like a demo on like how the PDF reader works and like how much you can actually zoom in and draw on it so people can see how quick it is compared to like other readers or e-readers?

So you can think of it as like basically a healthier iPad. Whatever you can do on an iPad, you can basically do on here. So one simple way to use this is, you know, you can read, read things on it. So this is a PDF right here? So this is a PDF that we have here. And this is a total passive stylus. There's no battery. There's no Bluetooth in this.

It just works off of magnetic resonance. So that zoom is ungodly. How clean and fast that is. We built our own software to be able to do that. It's called a PDF renderer. And if you can, maybe it's hard to hear, but. You put the mic down towards it. Yeah, that's true.

There you go. That sounds like paper. Yeah. We met if, we engineered the surface to have nanodots to best replicate my favorite Japanese paper called Campus Kyoko. Wow. So that's literally making a physical sound. And that's our whole point.

let's see if it's back. That's our whole point is computers don't need to feel like shit. They don't need to be these metallic, cold, inorganic, you know, emotionless things. They can have some kinesthetic. They can have this appeal. So basically you can use it for reading things. You can take notes. You can write.

You know, you can do your email on this. You can put a keyboard kind of like a Microsoft Surface or an iPad Pro. you know i like to take notes on this um and and you can get pretty much any app on here then you can like import your note thing like like um the one you use and obsidian or scrivener i'm sure whatever if you you can use this to listen to you know audible

Spotify podcast audiobooks um you know you can do basically anything um on this because you get android apps and web apps and things like that. And so we're going to build a version of the software that's got a more focused lockdown mode. But what's that mean? Just basically it helps curate apps that are better for you.

And tries to like create some friction for the things that are distracting and that. But basically this mode that it's in right now is the hardware, the display difference, so evens the playing field. Actually, it's fine to kind of have access to everything. You don't end up getting distracted or

addicted on this. So So this is just, I'm in the browser. You're able to, you know, to read the news, read newsletters. You could go on YouTube if you want to and listen to. You can actually watch YouTube videos. And with they're in black and white. Imagine if every single person on Earth automatically got these instead of their regular computers. Yeah.

I mean, media companies would be going out of business left and right. And that's the thing is the entire ad model starts to fall apart. Yeah. When it's not super stimulating and addicting and compulsive. The ad model falls apart and then I wouldn't have a podcast anymore. I'd have people get a real job. That's not true because you listen to audio on here. Yeah, good content, good products and so on.

I think we'll always stand the test at time. You have to get better. It's the stuff that needs to pander to you because it's not actually good for you. It doesn't deliver on its promise. To your point, it has all these negative long-term effects. Mm-hmm. And so. So what do you want to do?

What is going to be like the next thing? Or this is going to be like a version 2.0 or like what are you currently doing now to other than like you're actively still like raising money? I'm sure. Right. But like as far as the hardware and the technology like what is your goal? Well, so the big vision of daylight is basically if you made Apple a public benefit corporation. It's primarily alignment was what to help people. And it wasn't captured by public markets and shareholders and so on.

How could it make technology healthier and more humane? And so our goal is to basically go through each of the different categories of computing. And so starting with the tablet, but then making a phone, making a laptop, making monitors, making screens that you can put on your walls, you know, kind of like digital whiteboards or whatever, go and redo computing to be healthier. So with our screen technology, with software that is far less distracting. Our vision is to kind of create a new ecosystem of tech,

and there's a lot to be done in terms of also changing the primitives of an operating system. You're locked in in many ways, because by default Apple's going to put iCloud everything, Apple logins and this and that. Yeah, they built this, like, amazing wall. garden around Apple products. It's, which is fucking genius. It's brilliant. But, you know, if they want to charge $40 a month, you know, like give up all your photos that you've ever had. I've been

thinking about trying to switch phones. Do you have it's stored anywhere else? Like, right, it's, I have literally on my phone, I have every photo I've taken for like the last 10 years, which gets to like, whenever I update my phone, it just sucks it right into the new phone. So I have photos I took in like 2010. And by the way, we live on a finite, planet, but the public markets expect infinite growth. So at a certain point, how does Apple make more money? It's by, you know, turning up the screws even more and more. And so the possibility of a new operating system and a new computing ecosystem is we could have a total different set of primitives. So identity can be decentralized. It's, it doesn't need to be provided by daylight. It can be

it's called a D-I-D. So this could be blue sky, it could be Noster, there's a bunch of new technologies that are sovereign. They're not controlled by any corporation or any individual. They're completely decentralized,

kind of like Bitcoin. And so similar thing with payments is instead of having Visa, a MasterCard and all of that, only be the way to do it. What if you could also build in some of these new decentralized payment technologies like Bitcoin and so on?

And so there's a way to have a new computing stack, that is far more private, far more years, not covered in tracking and spying and all these kind of tendrils, but it's completely sovereign and private and decentralized. And it's really hard to get people to adopt that on their existing system or computers, but if you're going to start computing basically from scratch again, you can now rebuild it with this new stack. For example, the storage could be decentralized.

So rather than your Apple photos being in Apple's servers, let's say we were to have storage app or so on, it could basically take your files and there's a kind of a, there's an algorithm, a distributed algorithm where it sends it across your network of friends, 150 people, and it stores a little bit with each person or a thousand people and so on. Like blockchain? It's complicated. Yeah. But the basic ideas we now have the technology. to basically have community or people or peers store things and stuff like that. Oh, wow.

And so therefore, even if daylight, you know, you don't like daylight, daylight can't control you. You can't start trying to charge you for that, because we don't actually store it and therefore gate you from it. You're storing it amongst your own network. And so the possibility of peer to peer and actually community-driven computing

starts to become available if we build it in as the defaults into this future operating systems. And Apple, so on, they're not going to do it. They make a lot of money spying on you. They make a lot of money keeping you're in the wall of garden. So the only way as a society is to create these kind of new alternatives and new computing platforms. So that's our vision is from the software, from the hardware, how do we reimagine it at all to be more socially beneficial? How much harder would it be to make a phone like this?

Oh, that's what we have coming next. Oh, that's the next thing. That's the next thing. Yeah. I imagine it's got to be crazy because you got to have like, you got to be able to connect it with the cellular providers and like text messaging apps and stuff like that. I imagine it's quite a bit different than just like something that's connected to Wi-Fi. It's harder too.

And I message, at least in America, it's such a strong lock-in. Yeah. That's an Apple, you know, doesn't make it possible. Well, the new one with the new update, you can actually like see when people on Android are typing and you can see when they read your messages. It's getting closer. Yeah. So that's what we're trying to do here is like there's hopefully some opportunities and

breaking points and tipping points here. that allow these other options to actually, you know, be able to compete with the existing system. So, yeah, a phone that, you know, comes with this live paper screen that's blue light free, flicker free, distraction free, usable in the sun, not addicting. Do you think you would include the ability to make it like with full spectrum color and all that stuff? Or would you keep it kind of like monochrome like this? I think this is how we're able to kind of level the playing field right now is with this kind of non-exam. stimulating computer screen. I think if we can show and prove that we're able to do color in a way

that's responsible that's not addicting and overstimulating, maybe eventually we'll be able to do it. But it's not a plan for the first couple of years. Right. And the battery life. Yeah, the battery life is substantially better because you're not trying to compete with nature. You're not trying to compete with the light from the sun or from your environment. So this, for example, lasts 62 hours if you use it for reading continuously. So. that's amazing. 62 hours. So the idea of,

so we're not sure if it can replace somebody's iPhone to start. Right. But maybe, you know, if you want to give your kid a phone, you finally have a way to do it and not be worried that it's going to be, you know,

super addicting or take over their lives. Because games, TikTok, that type of stuff, it just like is not interesting. Right. On, you know, on a daylight screen.

So, yeah. That's what we're kind of starting with. And for other people, Maybe it's a nighttime phone or a weekend phone or something like that. But our idea is let's just create healthier computers in each of these categories and see what sticks. I think, I've ever thought about, like, I imagine other countries might be more interested in implementing shit like this, like earlier than the U.S. would. Well, the U.S. is finally catching up, right?

They're like banning phones in schools. California did that this year. Did they really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They banned phones in schools Look up the legislation Yeah It's across a ton of states now

Gavin Newsom But it's It's all over the place So but In China too Phones are banned from schools Because of myopia And they're worried about the instance of Australia

France I think the world's waking up to actually How bad this is Did you know about how TikTok Regulates their platform in China Versus here No After

I think it's after after like 6 p.m. You can only get educational content on TikTok in China. Oh, wow. And here there's no limits on it at all. That's crazy. And then I think it's like, so after like between like six and 10,

it's educational stuff. And then I could be wrong here, but I want to say that like between like 11 p.m. and like 6 a.m., you just can't use it at all. That says a lot about, especially if they're the ones that created TikTok, right? What you need to know, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed Assembly Bill 3216, the Phone Free School Act to require every school district charter school and county office of education to develop a policy limiting the use of smartphones starting July 1st, 2026.

Huh. That's interesting. That's so interesting that TikTok is a free for all in America and in China is. Yeah, right. Isn't that crazy? And there's so much like, you know, even with stuff that you get on TikTok, I'm not, I mean, this isn't just TikTok, but it's like the way, the way stuff is shared on social media too. It's like the most outrageous stuff is the stuff that naturally gets shared more and goes viral more. Like we recently had a podcast where we had this dude who's a former CIA officer and we were watching some new story on TikTok about. China implementing these exploding helmets for their for their Navy pilots. So like if a pilot who's on a mission like flying their jet in China decides to go rogue

or do something that they're not supposed to do, the Chinese military, God damn it. Excuse me. The Chinese military has the ability to make their helmet explode to kill them. And it was a TikTok. I'm like, I saw it on TikTok. We found the actual TikTok. And then we like did some more recent. just like we dug into it, found it that was completely a fake story.

So like, you know, if you get rid of that, that whole element of social media and like, and how it, how just like the most outrageous stuff gets shared more, I wonder how that would affect just information in general. You know what I mean? The dissemination of information. Because, you know, obviously, like, we're flooded by all this like misinformation and disinformation and strategic disinformation, strategic disinformation, strategic deception. And, you know, it's like the, and then even in Silicon Valley, you have lots of companies like Palantir, which is in Silicon Valley.

I don't know if you're familiar with them, but that's Peter Thiel. And I forget the other guy's name. But there was this other guy who's the CEO of Palantir, Alex Carp. And he's like this super progressive liberal guy. but he he he in his new york times interview he says quoted saying the idea of saving lives and ending lives is very interesting to me you know he's like if if i have this company this super powerful technological company that i can integrate into the world and the u.s military is going to give me billions of dollars to do it i'm going to take advantage of that and you know he he he believes that he believes in obviously in United States supremacy over the rest of the world. And at the same time, he, like, portrays himself as being this really progressive and liberal guy. And he's best friends with Peter Thiel, which is interesting.

So, like, it's just like, like what Jack said, incentives dictate outcomes. So, like, it's just interesting how the military and companies like in QTel, the CIA are so involved with so many tech companies. And, and, you know, the foundation of it is spying on people and taking and getting all the information of all the citizens and what they're doing at all times. So I think that's why there's potentially going to be a lot of people who are going to be really pissed off that this exists because you start to be able to make technology that doesn't have back doors, that's private, that isn't sending all your information, that doesn't allow you to get track. It doesn't allow you to get bombarded by ads the same way.

The goal here is let's create a computer where my opinion doesn't determine what happens to you. That's create something that's sovereign, that's safe, that follows natural principles, and you get to choose what to do with it. Versus somebody else from afar controlling your attention and time and making choices on your behalf. So that to me is like society needs technology that isn't, that's. that's free. Right. And that's the real thing here is if we don't go out of our way to do this, if we don't go out of our way to make it, I think we're pulled by the machine.

How far off do you think you are from making the phone? It depends how well this tablet does, but you can expect it from us in the next two years or so. So you have, the first batch was 5,000 tablets. Yeah. And how many orders do you have? Well, sold out. We completely sold out of all that. You still have people that have orders that haven't received them yet, right?

So, like, so how many total orders have you gotten? So, yeah, we've gotten like 5,000. Oh, so you haven't delivered all the 5,000. So so far you've gotten 5,000 orders. We've delivered about 1,600 of them, and we're going to deliver another 1,000 this week, and kind of until the end of the year. So we spent the summer getting production. It's a hard thing to do, and now we're delivering.

And the hope here is, yeah, keep, keep sparing the word and keep growing this and hopefully creating a new ecosystem. And where are you like building them and assembling them? And the display technology is made in Japan and then Taiwan is where. Oh, yeah, we're in Taiwan. So maybe one of these days we'll be able to make it onshore. Japan's, fuck, dude, they're always on the cutting edge of shit. There was something that came out yesterday that Japan's trying to create a wooden satellite. Did you see that?

they're actually they built a satellite made of wood and they're going to put it into orbit and they're going to I think they're going to let it orbit the earth for six months to see how

how the wood can withstand and something to do with yeah there you go click on that first one is they can make a satellite out of wood we have no excuse that we can't make computers out of wood and natural materials that feel bad dude

dude imagine if you made one of these made out of fucking wood yeah yeah what is it say? What's the first thing say? Yeah, the world's first wooded satellite built by the Japanese researchers was launched. Oh, it was launched into space already on Tuesday in an early

test using timber in lunar and Mars exploration. Developed at Kayoto in university and home builder Sumitomo forestry will be flown to the international space station on

a SpaceX mission and later released into orbit around 400 kilometers or 250 miles above Earth named after the Latin word for wood. The palm-sized lignosat. It's a palm-sized satellite. It's tasked to demonstrate the cosmic potential of renewable materials as humans explore.

So, yeah, I guess the idea is when it comes back and reinteres the atmosphere, it'll just be burned up by the atmosphere so you won't have any kind of waste or anything. You want to go and retrieve it. No satellite still burn up, so... Yeah. Wild shit, man.

Well, dude, thanks. Thanks for coming. This is fun. And thank you for the daylight computer. I'm so psyched to use this thing, man. Thanks for having me on. I feel like if... I've been loving this rabbit hole, this light rabbit hole.

I don't think people... I think if the more or more we become aware of the way computers are affecting us at all levels of health, physical health, mental health, addiction, distraction, the more we're going to have a chance to be free. and so thanks for having me on and hopefully we can escape the inevitability

of the gray alien matrix VR timeline and create a more solar punk Yeah hopefully we can see we can stay Stay in our human form now and not evolve into the little gray aliens Yeah, that's cool shit man Well thanks again obviously I'll link all your stuff below So people can find out more about it Yeah and if anybody wants to email me

I'm engine at daylightcomcom and Feel free to reach out always looking for interesting new folks to collaborate with. Awesome, dude. All right. Good night, everybody.